sunset from behind the wire

Sunday, July 12, 2015

He explained that everything works differently in the snow. Everyday items such as adhesives that work in regular snow don't work in very cold conditions.

It seemed to take a week to explore the metrics that he ticked off for successful operations in non-snowy weather including the woodcraft to pull it off, are more complex as soon as the snow falls. Even when we landed in Helsinki and took a taxi to Scandic Paasi, I thought more in terms of a ski trip. Dinner at Juuri Keittio and Baari is how it started but that's not at all what it turned out to be, and I learned what when you eat MRE's, constipation follows - the hard way.

In the Arctic, it's much more difficult. When you're north of the tree line in the tundra, it's impossible. That's where I found myself, laying on my belly wearing overwhites.

Overwhites are a type of coverall that you wear in situations where the world is white. Battle Dress Uniforms (BDU's) are worthless. Between my overwhites and my flesh were down coat and trousers, long underwear, a Goretex insulating layer, trigger finger mitts with liners, a balaclava, neck gaiter, and hat. My feet were encased in vapor barrier boots, wools socks and Goretex under-socks.

If you move they can see you. If you walk or run, they can track you and since there are no trees or cover, a helicopter can just hover out there following your footprints. Good thermal gear will spot the heat differential between your energy-burning body and the surrounding ambient -30F ground. Arctic is a bitch, but so am I. To reinforce that, he leaned over, pulled back my balaclava and chewed on my ear. I didn't know whether it was a sexual overture or to break my concentration. Knowing him, both.

It's worse when you weigh 125 lbs soaking wet, because you have to pack over half your own weight in equipment. I didn't understand any of this when I signed up with the outfit, and the guy laying next to me didn't explain it. Then again, he didn't kill me either and I was grateful for that. Less grateful in a snow suit in Finland in the winter, though.

He called it a training exercise. I called it torture. My rifle was lighter than his. He'd folded an Accuracy International Arctic Warfare Covert Rifle up inside my pack. He said that somebody nicked it from German G25 special operators. He carried an Accuracy International AX 338 with a Schmidt and Bender PM2 scope and glassed the countryside forward of us with the twenty-five power scope.

"I'm thinking of Hawaii, Jack. That condo at Ko-Olina."

"Keep your head in the game Grace."

Grace is not my name. He calls me that when I trip and fall. It's an inside joke, and not one that I'm particularly fond of. Since the outfit took me on for training, Jack has been running me ragged. I didn't think that they'd pair me up with my boyfriend but Jack explained that it worked better that way. I didn't need to know all of the people who work for the group. We would train as a team and operate as a team.

I was laying on my back when the man with the black pantagonia ski overalls, stopped in front of our hide and staked his poles hard into the ice pack for effect. "Jack. Princess. How's your Finland vacation coming along?"

Jack quickly pulled himself together and stood. "Go ahead and shake the dew from the lily, Freddy Fuckfaster." The man had one of those weathered faces that sunburn seems to have little effect on, like tanned leather, cracked and worn, but tough. "I've been sitting twenty feet away, watching the two of you for the past six hours. I had breakfast and lunch. I swear to Christ that you didn't disappoint. It was like watching porn the whole time. I understand a little morning wood, but this is taking a good thing to an extreme."

It may sound funny, but I never thought that we were taking it to an extreme. It's how we usually pass the morning.

"We were a little bored and had to pass the time," Jack offered by way of excuse.

"Princess, you are supposed to piss and shit where you hide, not get up and walk twenty feet to handle nature's call and clean up. You're trying to be snipers, for love of pete. Jack, you were one once. I know that. What happened to Scout Sniper School discipline? Don't answer that, I know what happened. Little Sally rottencrotch ruined you."

"You don't have to be abusive," I shared with the stranger who had yet to introduce himself, but who Jack seemed to be acquainted with.

Jack looked at me with daggers, speaking to the stranger, "You're right, Wilson."

"The thermal bloom from your hide," the man Jack identified as Wilson tapped night vision gear, "looked like a couple of randy mink were living in there. Come to think of it, that's precisely what's going on here."

"No excuse." Jack took the blame for me, and I loved him even more for it.

"There never is. Gather up your traps and we'll head back. Exercise finished. I told the Center that putting the two of you together in the bush wouldn't work...too much bush is the problem."

Nobody ever said that I was a good girl, but I look the part
and it works for me.

When
I first saw him, sitting next to his buddy at the table at the Balboa Bay Club,
I took his measure. Nobody would call him a good boy. Nobody would call him a
boy either.They were both shirtless, but his
shoulders were somewhere around a yard wide and his friend was one of those
smaller men, built like weasels, wiry and nasty.You can’t miss the scars. They’re not the
sort of marks that soft men have. The ink was all devil dog, 3rd
Battalion, 1st Marines.

I
took the shirt that he'd draped over an empty chair and put it on. Pointing to his
tattoo I said, “Balls of the Corps”. You see, I am a Marine Corps brat, and I
knew three-one's motto. Inviting myself to his table was a far surer tactic than wasting the day being subtle and competing with the rest of the women.

They
were drinking Mai Tais, and I drank his. He ordered another one and asked my
name. I asked him if he wanted my stripper name or the name I was born with.
I’m not a stripper or a whore, though, I’ve been called the latter by men I
didn’t screw.

They
didn’t have jar head hair cuts and didn’t have the disciplined vibe and jibe of the recently discharged, so I
figured that they’d been out long enough to hang out with. He told me that his
name was Jack, and I knew that he lied to me, but it worked well enough. I knew
that I would sleep with him after the first five minutes. The next six hours
was all kabuki theater on both our parts. The love making had that hard,
intense quality, which defines the difference between fucking and intercourse.
When he went for fourths, and handcuffed me, I knew that it would be love.

He
lived in one of those high-rise luxury places across Pacific Coast Highway from
the beach, all chrome, glass and leather. When I woke up, he’d left, but since
I lounged in his place, I knew that he’d be back. I opened his best bottle of
champagne, found a box of berries and waited. While waiting, I searched the place out of curiosity.
Women leave their marks on men. Even if it’s panties left behind in a drawer or
a toothbrush in the medicine cabinet. We claim turf. There was no sign of
another woman, and Jack, or whatever his parents named him, wasn’t queer. The art was tasteful, but had an aggressive masculine quality to it. I found knives with wicked, sharp blades and loaded handguns spread around the condo in unusual places. There
are two kinds of people who do that, those who are clinically paranoid and
those who have a reason to be. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.

Nothing
about him spoke to life as a government drone or yardbird thug. This guy definitely did not lap at the
taxpayer’s trough and his friends were all like him - definitely not ex-cons. Still, how could I help but be suspicious? He had too much money and way too much time on his hands. We
dropped the top on his Maserati and cruised the beach scene, we climbed half dome in
Yosemite and we scuba’d in the Sea of Cortez. The credit cards all belonged to
foreign banks from places like Monte Negro and Grand Cayman, all in the name of
Jack Smith.

The
hook came when we were staying in mother’s apartment and an ambulance hauled
another suicide attempt out to the local hospital. I commented that there were
a lot of them here. The wheels turned. Keep in mind that with Jack, they always
turned.I found it attractive, and not
usually sinister, but this time, there was a darkness to his
concentration.“Would you spill coffee
on a guy and offer to bring him home to wash his pants?”

“What?”

“Just
what I said, would you?”

“Why’s
that?”

“Because
I’m going to put a rope around his neck,” he pointed to my climbing gear, fresh from an ascent in Arizona, waiting in the corner to be washed and put away, “and
drop him off the balcony.”

I thought it was one of those sick jokes that he played on his buddies but when he actually did it, I lost my lunch right there on the floor. He liked it, said that it played well, and that the cops would like the barf too.

A drug dealer keeps my mother, and I asked him if he was in the same business. He said that he wasn’t precisely in that line of work, but close enough. I pointed out that I’d seen too much to be left behind. He replied, “who’s leaving you?"

Housekeeping

As of January 1, 2017 this blog began to receive anonymous posts. I try not to delete them, but if you want to be taken seriously here, you need to identify yourself, if only by some sort of cryptonym.

Welcome to Virtual Mirage

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the cat. "We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad," asked Alice?

"You must be," said the cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

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Virtual Mirage - What's on the other side of the mirror? Ask Alice how deep the rabbit hole really goes.

This blog is an extension of MY JOURNEY because sometimes my journey needs more explanation, and sometimes there is more to be said than can be expressed on one ordinary blog.

Sometimes it's politics (very serious), sometimes I address the human condition with a dose of humor, and other times it may seem as if the track is headed in a unique direction. I can be a complicated guy at times.

There are a few things you'll find I consider:

* Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

* Sometimes the questions are complex but the answers are simple.

* Love is the only condition where the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

* Steers do not sign treaties with meat packers. (think on that)

* Taxes are NEVER levied for the benefit of the taxed.

* The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no victory possible in defense.

WHITE POWDER (Novel)

There is something intoxicating about a secret.

THE OLD WHORE (NOVEL)

In the peculiar culture of the Central Intelligence Agency, "old whores" are people who will do whatever it takes to get the job done, irrespective of the cost.

EXILES FROM EDEN (NOVEL)

Sparks fly as two star-crossed lovers meet. He runs toward trouble as she yearns for something missing. And it ends in a flight from and toward justice.

About Me

Today, I balance work and play as much as anyone can. All things remaining equal, play is more important. Life is short - it's important to make every day count for something, if only to yourself.
I'm a former tinker/tailor/soldier/sailor who has now decided that maybe it really wasn't all done for nothing.

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